_15 Hours
or]Years
and 1832.
Shelley
Buxton Forman, C. B. ; "Poetical Works of P. B. S. ", Library Edition,
1876, volume 3 page 410. ) First included among Shelley's poetical works
in Mr. Forman's Library Edition, where a facsimile of the manuscript is
given. Composed February 4, 1818. See "Complete Works of John Keats",
edition H. Buxton Forman, Glasgow, 1901, volume 4 page 76. ]
Month after month the gathered rains descend
Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,
And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles
Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. _5
Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells
By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells
Urging those waters to their mighty end.
O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level
And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest _10
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.
***
PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.
[Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems",
1824. There is a copy amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian
Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment. ]
Listen, listen, Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow _5
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread _10
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding. . .
***
THE PAST.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]
1.
Wilt thou forget the happy hours
Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,
Heaping over their corpses cold
Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?
Blossoms which were the joys that fell, _5
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.
2.
Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
Memories that make the heart a tomb,
Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, _10
And with ghastly whispers tell
That joy, once lost, is pain.
***
TO MARY --.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]
O Mary dear, that you were here
With your brown eyes bright and clear.
And your sweet voice, like a bird
Singing love to its lone mate
In the ivy bower disconsolate; _5
Voice the sweetest ever heard!
And your brow more. . .
Than the . . . sky
Of this azure Italy.
Mary dear, come to me soon, _10
I am not well whilst thou art far;
As sunset to the sphered moon,
As twilight to the western star,
Thou, beloved, art to me.
O Mary dear, that you were here; _15
The Castle echo whispers 'Here! '
***
ON A FADED VIOLET.
[Published by Hunt, "Literary Pocket-Book", 1821. Reprinted by Mrs.
Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Again reprinted, with several
variants, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. Our text is that of the
editio princeps, 1821. A transcript is extant in a letter from Shelley
to Sophia Stacey, dated March 7, 1820. ]
1.
The odour from the flower is gone
Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
The colour from the flower is flown
Which glowed of thee and only thee!
2.
A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, _5
It lies on my abandoned breast,
And mocks the heart which yet is warm,
With cold and silent rest.
3.
I weep,--my tears revive it not!
I sigh,--it breathes no more on me; _10
Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.
NOTES:
_1 odour]colour 1839.
_2 kisses breathed]sweet eyes smiled 1839.
_3 colour]odour 1839.
_4 glowed]breathed 1839.
_5 shrivelled]withered 1839.
_8 cold and silent all editions; its cold, silent Stacey manuscript.
***
LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS.
OCTOBER, 1818.
[Composed at Este, October, 1818. Published with "Rosalind and Helen",
1819. Amongst the late Mr. Fredk. Locker-Lampson's collections at
Rowfant there is a manuscript of the lines (167-205) on Byron,
interpolated after the completion of the poem. ]
Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on--
Day and night, and night and day, _5
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel's track:
Whilst above the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, _10
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o'er-brimming deep; _15
And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;
And the dim low line before
Of a dark and distant shore _20
Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will,
But no power to seek or shun,
He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave _25
To the haven of the grave.
What, if there no friends will greet;
What, if there no heart will meet
His with love's impatient beat;
Wander wheresoe'er he may, _30
Can he dream before that day
To find refuge from distress
In friendship's smile, in love's caress?
Then 'twill wreak him little woe
Whether such there be or no: _35
Senseless is the breast, and cold,
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve _40
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortured lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December's bough.
On the beach of a northern sea _45
Which tempests shake eternally,
As once the wretch there lay to sleep,
Lies a solitary heap,
One white skull and seven dry bones,
On the margin of the stones, _50
Where a few gray rushes stand,
Boundaries of the sea and land:
Nor is heard one voice of wail
But the sea-mews, as they sail
O'er the billows of the gale; _55
Or the whirlwind up and down
Howling, like a slaughtered town,
When a king in glory rides
Through the pomp of fratricides:
Those unburied bones around _60
There is many a mournful sound;
There is no lament for him,
Like a sunless vapour, dim,
Who once clothed with life and thought
What now moves nor murmurs not. _65
Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide Agony:
To such a one this morn was led,
My bark by soft winds piloted:
'Mid the mountains Euganean _70
I stood listening to the paean
With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun's uprise majestical;
Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Through the dewy mist they soar _75
Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
Flecked with fire and azure, lie
In the unfathomable sky,
So their plumes of purple grain, _80
Starred with drops of golden rain,
Gleam above the sunlight woods,
As in silent multitudes
On the morning's fitful gale
Through the broken mist they sail, _85
And the vapours cloven and gleaming
Follow, down the dark steep streaming,
Till all is bright, and clear, and still,
Round the solitary hill.
Beneath is spread like a green sea _90
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath Day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, _95
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind, _100
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright, _105
Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies; _110
As the flames of sacrifice
From the marble shrines did rise,
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt City, thou hast been _115
Ocean's child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier. _120
A less drear ruin then than now,
With thy conquest-branded brow
Stooping to the slave of slaves
From thy throne, among the waves
Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew _125
Flies, as once before it flew,
O'er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its ancient state,
Save where many a palace gate _130
With green sea-flowers overgrown
Like a rock of Ocean's own,
Topples o'er the abandoned sea
As the tides change sullenly.
The fisher on his watery way,
Wandering at the close of day, _135
Will spread his sail and seize his oar
Till he pass the gloomy shore,
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o'er the starlight deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death _140
O'er the waters of his path.
Those who alone thy towers behold
Quivering through aereal gold,
As I now behold them here,
Would imagine not they were _145
Sepulchres, where human forms,
Like pollution-nourished worms,
To the corpse of greatness cling,
Murdered, and now mouldering:
But if Freedom should awake _150
In her omnipotence, and shake
From the Celtic Anarch's hold
All the keys of dungeons cold,
Where a hundred cities lie
Chained like thee, ingloriously, _155
Thou and all thy sister band
Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime;
If not, perish thou and they! -- _160
Clouds which stain truth's rising day
By her sun consumed away--
Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,
In the waste of years and hours,
From your dust new nations spring _165
With more kindly blossoming.
Perish--let there only be
Floating o'er thy hearthless sea
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally, _170
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan;--
That a tempest-cleaving Swan
Of the songs of Albion, _175
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung _180
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror:--what though yet
Poesy's unfailing River,
Which through Albion winds forever _185
Lashing with melodious wave
Many a sacred Poet's grave,
Mourn its latest nursling fled?
What though thou with all thy dead
Scarce can for this fame repay _190
Aught thine own? oh, rather say
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sunlike soul?
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander's wasting springs; _195
As divinest Shakespeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged 'mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch's urn, _200
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp by which the heart
Sees things unearthly;--so thou art,
Mighty spirit--so shall be
The City that did refuge thee. _205
Lo, the sun floats up the sky
Like thought-winged Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread, _210
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.
By the skirts of that gray cloud
Many-domed Padua proud _215
Stands, a peopled solitude,
'Mid the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow _220
With the purple vintage strain,
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;
And the sickle to the sword _225
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region's foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction's harvest-home: _230
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. _235
Padua, thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, "I win, I win! " _240
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o'er, _245
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before, _250
Both have ruled from shore to shore,--
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As Repentance follows Crime,
And as changes follow Time. _255
In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;
Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray: _260
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth:
Now new fires from antique light _265
Spring beneath the wide world's might;
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by Tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells, _270
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born:
The spark beneath his feet is dead, _275
He starts to see the flames it fed
Howling through the darkened sky
With a myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear: so thou,
O Tyranny, beholdest now _280
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!
Noon descends around me now: _285
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,
When a soft and purple mist
Like a vaporous amethyst,
Or an air-dissolved star
Mingling light and fragrance, far _290
From the curved horizon's bound
To the point of Heaven's profound,
Fills the overflowing sky;
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath, the leaves unsodden _295
Where the infant Frost has trodden
With his morning-winged feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellised lines _300
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line _305
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one; _310
And my spirit which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song,--
Interpenetrated lie
By the glory of the sky:
Be it love, light, harmony, _315
Odour, or the soul of all
Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.
Noon descends, and after noon _320
Autumn's evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings _325
From the sunset's radiant springs:
And the soft dreams of the morn
(Which like winged winds had borne
To that silent isle, which lies
Mid remembered agonies, _330
The frail bark of this lone being)
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.
Other flowering isles must be _335
In the sea of Life and Agony:
Other spirits float and flee
O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folded wings they waiting sit _340
For my bark, to pilot it
To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love,
May a windless bower be built,
Far from passion, pain, and guilt, _345
In a dell mid lawny hills,
Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
And soft sunshine, and the sound
Of old forests echoing round,
And the light and smell divine _350
Of all flowers that breathe and shine:
We may live so happy there,
That the Spirits of the Air,
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing Paradise _355
The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves _360
Under which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies; _365
And the love which heals all strife
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood,
They, not it, would change; and soon _370
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again.
NOTES:
_54 seamews 1819; seamew's Rossetti.
_115 Sun-girt]Sea-girt cj. Palgrave.
_165 From your dust new 1819;
From thy dust shall Rowfant manuscript (heading of lines 167-205).
_175 songs 1819; sons cj. Forman.
_278 a 1819; wanting, 1839.
***
SCENE FROM 'TASSO'.
[Composed, 1818. Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
MADDALO, A COURTIER.
MALPIGLIO, A POET.
PIGNA, A MINISTER.
ALBANO, AN USHER.
MADDALO:
No access to the Duke! You have not said
That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?
PIGNA:
Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna
Waits with state papers for his signature?
MALPIGLIO:
The Lady Leonora cannot know _5
That I have written a sonnet to her fame,
In which I . . . Venus and Adonis.
You should not take my gold and serve me not.
ALBANO:
In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,
'If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy, _10
Art the Adonis whom I love, and he
The Erymanthian boar that wounded him. '
O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,
Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.
MALPIGLIO:
The words are twisted in some double sense _15
That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.
PIGNA:
How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?
ALBANO:
Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning,
His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.
The Princess sate within the window-seat, _20
And so her face was hid; but on her knee
Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,
And quivering--young Tasso, too, was there.
MADDALO:
Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven
Thou drawest down smiles--they did not rain on thee. _25
MALPIGLIO:
Would they were parching lightnings for his sake
On whom they fell!
***
SONG FOR 'TASSO'.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]
1.
I loved--alas! our life is love;
But when we cease to breathe and move
I do suppose love ceases too.
I thought, but not as now I do,
Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore, _5
Of all that men had thought before.
And all that Nature shows, and more.
2.
And still I love and still I think,
But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live, _10
And love;. . .
And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.
3.
Sometimes I see before me flee _15
A silver spirit's form, like thee,
O Leonora, and I sit
. . . still watching it,
Till by the grated casement's ledge
It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge _20
Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge.
***
INVOCATION TO MISERY.
[Published by Medwin, "The Athenaeum", September 8, 1832. Reprinted (as
"Misery, a Fragment") by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st
edition. Our text is that of 1839. A pencil copy of this poem is
amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C. D.
Locock's "Examination", etc. , 1903, page 38. The readings of this copy
are indicated by the letter B. in the footnotes. ]
1.
Come, be happy! --sit near me,
Shadow-vested Misery:
Coy, unwilling, silent bride,
Mourning in thy robe of pride,
Desolation--deified! _5
2.
Come, be happy! --sit near me:
Sad as I may seem to thee,
I am happier far than thou,
Lady, whose imperial brow
Is endiademed with woe. _10
3.
Misery! we have known each other,
Like a sister and a brother
Living in the same lone home,
Many years--we must live some
Hours or ages yet to come. _15
4.
'Tis an evil lot, and yet
Let us make the best of it;
If love can live when pleasure dies,
We two will love, till in our eyes
This heart's Hell seem Paradise. _20
5.
Come, be happy! --lie thee down
On the fresh grass newly mown,
Where the Grasshopper doth sing
Merrily--one joyous thing
In a world of sorrowing! _25
6.
There our tent shall be the willow,
And mine arm shall be thy pillow;
Sounds and odours, sorrowful
Because they once were sweet, shall lull
Us to slumber, deep and dull. _30
7.
Ha! thy frozen pulses flutter
With a love thou darest not utter.
Thou art murmuring--thou art weeping--
Is thine icy bosom leaping
While my burning heart lies sleeping? _35
8.
Kiss me;--oh! thy lips are cold:
Round my neck thine arms enfold--
They are soft, but chill and dead;
And thy tears upon my head
Burn like points of frozen lead. _40
9.
Hasten to the bridal bed--
Underneath the grave 'tis spread:
In darkness may our love be hid,
Oblivion be our coverlid--
We may rest, and none forbid. _45
10.
Clasp me till our hearts be grown
Like two shadows into one;
Till this dreadful transport may
Like a vapour fade away,
In the sleep that lasts alway. _50
11.
We may dream, in that long sleep,
That we are not those who weep;
E'en as Pleasure dreams of thee,
Life-deserting Misery,
Thou mayst dream of her with me. _55
12.
Let us laugh, and make our mirth,
At the shadows of the earth,
As dogs bay the moonlight clouds,
Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds,
Pass o'er night in multitudes. _60
13.
All the wide world, beside us,
Show like multitudinous
Puppets passing from a scene;
What but mockery can they mean,
Where I am--where thou hast been? _65
NOTES:
_1 near B. , 1839; by 1832.
_8 happier far]merrier yet B.
_15 Hours or]Years and 1832.
_17 best]most 1832.
_19 We two will]We will 1832.
_27 mine arm shall be thy B. , 1839; thine arm shall be my 1832.
_33 represented by asterisks, 1832.
_34, _35 Thou art murmuring, thou art weeping,
Whilst my burning bosom's leaping 1832;
Was thine icy bosom leaping
While my burning heart was sleeping B.
_40 frozen 1832, 1839, B. ; molten cj. Forman.
_44 be]is B.
_47 shadows]lovers 1832, B.
_59 which B. , 1839; that 1832.
_62 Show]Are 1832, B.
_63 Puppets passing]Shadows shifting 1832; Shadows passing B.
_64, _65 So B. : What but mockery may they mean?
Where am I? --Where thou hast been 1832.
***
STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824, where it is dated
'December, 1818. ' A draft of stanza 1 is amongst the Boscombe
manuscripts. (Garnett). ]
1.
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light, _5
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.
2.
I see the Deep's untrampled floor _10
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone,--
The lightning of the noontide ocean _15
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
3.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around, _20
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned--
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround-- _25
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;--
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
4.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child, _30
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea _35
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
5.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan; _40
They might lament--for I am one
Whom men love not,--and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. _45
NOTES:
_4 might Boscombe manuscript, Medwin 1847; light 1824, 1839.
_5 The. . . light Boscombe manuscript, 1839, Medwin 1847;
omitted, 1824. moist earth Boscombe manuscript;
moist air 1839; west wind Medwin 1847.
_17 measured 1824; mingled 1847.
_18 did any heart now 1824; if any heart could Medwin 1847.
_31 the 1824; this Medwin 1847.
_36 dying 1824; outworn Medwin 1847.
***
THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824;
the remainder (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;-- _5
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness--as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, _10
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale _15
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters,--every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, _20
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle--ever from below _25
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are, _30
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish! --and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone, _35
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
. . .
And so this man returned with axe and saw _40
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene _45
With jagged leaves,--and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep--or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops
Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;-- _50
Around the cradles of the birds aloft
They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds:--or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers, _55
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion--and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies, _60
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain _65
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.
. . .
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell. _70
NOTE:
_8 --or as a tuberose cj. A. C. Bradley.
***
MARENGHI. (This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's
"Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", which occurred during the war
when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a
province. --[MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1824. ])
[Published in part (stanzas 7-15. ) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems",
1824; stanzas 1-28 by W. M. Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works of P. B.
S. ", 1870. The Boscombe manuscript--evidently a first draft--from which
(through Dr. Garnett) Rossetti derived the text of 1870 is now at the
Bodleian, and has recently been collated by Mr. C. D. Locock, to whom
the enlarged and amended text here printed is owing. The substitution,
in title and text, of "Marenghi" for "Mazenghi" (1824) is due to
Rossetti. Here as elsewhere in the footnotes B. = the Bodleian
manuscript. ]
1.
Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,
Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn _5
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.
2.
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now. . .
. . .
3.
Another scene are wise Etruria knew
Its second ruin through internal strife _10
And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,
As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison.
4.
In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold _15
Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn:
A Sacrament more holy ne'er of old
Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn
Of moon-illumined forests, when. . .
5.
And reconciling factions wet their lips _20
With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit
Undarkened by their country's last eclipse. . .
. . .
6.
Was Florence the liberticide? that band
Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand, _25
A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faiths--wise, just--do they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey?
7.
O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory,
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour; _30
Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:--
The light-invested angel Poesy
Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
8.
And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught _35
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptor's fearless soul--and as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,
Thou wart among the false. . . was this thy crime? _40
9.
Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded--the snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces;--in thine
A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown, _45
And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.
10.
The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,
So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;-- _50
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake.
10a.
[Albert] Marenghi was a Florentine;
If he had wealth, or children, or a wife
Or friends, [or farm] or cherished thoughts which twine _55
The sights and sounds of home with life's own life
Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent. . .
. . .
11.
No record of his crime remains in story,
But if the morning bright as evening shone, _60
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.
12.
For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set _65
A penalty of blood on all who shared
So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided not--he went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.
13.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, _70
Month after month endured; it was a feast
Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere. _75
14.
And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made, _80
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,--
15.
He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide, _85
And on the other, creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.
16.
Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life--
Snakes and ill worms--endure its mortal dew.
The trophies of the clime's victorious strife-- _90
And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
And the wolf's dark gray scalp who tracked him there.
17.
And at the utmost point. . . stood there
The relics of a reed-inwoven cot, _95
Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer
Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot
When he was cold. The birds that were his grave
Fell dead after their feast in Vado's wave.
18.
There must have burned within Marenghi's breast _100
That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,
(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon. . .
More joyous than free heaven's majestic cope
To his oppressor), warring with decay,--
Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day. _105
19.
Nor was his state so lone as you might think.
He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,
And every seagull which sailed down to drink
Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.
And each one, with peculiar talk and play, _110
Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.
20.
And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night
Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;
And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,
In many entangled figures quaint and sweet _115
To some enchanted music they would dance--
Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.
21.
He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed
The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;
And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read _120
Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn
Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves
The likeness of the wood's remembered leaves.
22.
And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken--
While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron _125
Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken
Of mountains and blue isles which did environ
With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,--
And feel . . . liberty.
23.
And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean _130
Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,
Starting from dreams. . .
Communed with the immeasurable world;
And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,
Till his mind grew like that it contemplated. _135
24.
His food was the wild fig and strawberry;
The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast
Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry
As from the sea by winter-storms are cast;
And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found _140
Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.
25.
And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made
His solitude less dark. When memory came
(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),
His spirit basked in its internal flame,-- _145
As, when the black storm hurries round at night,
The fisher basks beside his red firelight.
26.
Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,
Like billows unawakened by the wind,
Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors, _150
Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.
His couch. . .
. . .
27.
And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planet
A black ship walk over the crimson ocean,--
Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it, _155
Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,
Like the dark ghost of the unburied even
Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,--
28.
The thought of his own kind who made the soul
Which sped that winged shape through night and day,-- _160
The thought of his own country. . .
. . .
NOTES:
_3 Who B. ; Or 1870.
_6 Marenghi's 1870; Mazenghi's B.
_7 town 1870; sea B.
_8 ruined 1870; squalid B. ('the whole line is cancelled,' Locock).
